


Don't Leave Me Anymore

by uchihayura



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 14:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19231300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uchihayura/pseuds/uchihayura
Summary: Finding Klaus sober was a miracle. If only he knew the tidal wave of hope that tore through her chest at the sight of him. But he didn’t know. In fact, there were many things Klaus didn’t know about [Y/N]. Things she’d been meaning to tell him.





	Don't Leave Me Anymore

“Are you sober?” She asked, heart leaping in disbelief.

[Y/N] found Klaus in the basement of the Academy, feet propped up on the table. Dangerously close to his father’s urn. She had come as soon as she heard about Reginald Hargreeves—not that she cared much for him. She was searching for the relief of finding Klaus safe and sound. And here he was.

“Just about,” Klaus answered begrudgingly. He grit his teeth together, drummed his fingers wildly on the table, and stood in a flash. His chair clattered to the floor behind him. He winced and picked it up, clumsily. He couldn’t stand to be sober.

“I’m supposed to conjure father dearest, the big dickwad,” Klaus mused. “Because one inquiring mind wants to know which of us killed him.”

“Killed him?” [Y/N] echoed incredulously. Shocked, truly. But Regardless of the circumstances, her heart fluttered against her chest. _Klaus, sober! In the middle of the day!_

“Yeah, Luther picked quite the time to finally develop an imagination,” he mumbled. “So now I have to sober up or face the wrath of his Hercules arms.”

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, ignoring that he spat the word _sober_ right through her heart. Finding Klaus clear-minded was a miracle, let alone finding him clear-minded by _choice_. If only he knew the tidal wave of hope that tore through her chest at the sight of him.

But he didn’t know. In fact, there were many things Klaus didn’t know about [Y/N]. Things she’d been meaning to tell him. Things she wanted to tell _only_ him, but not when his head was in the clouds. She needed him to hear her. _Really_ hear her. “There have to be worse things than being sober.”

“Care to name one?” He asked.

“Well, what about—“

Klaus blurted a sound like a buzzer. “Wrong! The answer is no, you can’t name anything worse than sobering up and facing the man who made my little world a hell on earth, just when I’m supposed to be _officially_ free from him.”

He walked in tight circles, leather skirt flapping around his shins. An ache in her chest sent her reaching for him. She stopped him gently, hands on his arms. His eyes stared into hers, a world of pain. The kind she understood.

“I just know the first words out of his crusty dead lips will be how disappointing I am,” he said. He turned his lips down and pulled out his worst British accent. “Ah, Number Four, most unfortunate you’re the only one I can commune with. You always were a little bitch.”

[Y/N] huffed a laugh, turning her gaze to the floor. How could she tell him that he wasn’t alone? That he never had been?

“Every day I lived here, I would wake up and hope it was one of the good days,” he said quietly. “One of the days where he didn’t step outside his office. Where I didn’t have to see him, or be reminded of all the ways I…”

He sighed, shallow. He pressed his fingertips into closed eyes, rubbing away what was probably a migraine. Real withdrawal wouldn’t start for some hours yet, but already he suffered.

“I know how that feels,” [Y/N] said carefully. Klaus’s head whipped up at her.

“What do you mean?” He asked. His face teetered between surprise and dismay. It broke her heart a thousand times over.

“I mean I understand how you feel.” It was out in the open, now. The stage was set. No going back. She dropped her hands to her sides, trembling already. “Okay—um—remember when you asked me why I don’t drink?”

Klaus nodded. “You said it was ‘cause I did. ‘Cause you had to drive…Even when we took a cab.” His brow furrowed, as though this detail just dawned upon him. His face scrunched up in the confusion brought on by clarity. The realization that he’d been lied to.

“Yeah,” [Y/N] said. “But I lied. It’s not because _you_ drink—it’s because my father did.”

Klaus’s lips hung open. He took a step toward her, looking like he could hug her already…But if she stopped now, she might never take the chance again.

“He would get so drunk,” [Y/N] explained, hands shaking. She’d never told anyone before. Something tried to hold her back. Her father. He always told her she was the problem, that anyone she told would think the same thing. That she was better off keeping her delusions to herself.

She swallowed hard. “He got drunk once and destroyed the house. I mean, holes in the walls and wine bottles crushed on the floor. Broken windows and knives to the furniture, the whole—everything. I left the house that night, came back the next day—

“But that was just one night where it got physical,” she shook her head. Her mind was jumping everywhere, as though she’d unleashed a floodgate. She didn’t know why she’d led with that, when the thing Klaus needed most to hear was: “But day-to-day, it was your typical mind games. Waking up, not knowing what kind of mood he’d be in. Walking on eggshells, you know? He’d try to bait me into an argument, and I always fell for it. It was lose-lose. I let him humiliate me, or I fight back and give him a reason to yell louder. Usually about what a bitch I was, how I didn’t belong in his home, or—you know—“

She trailed off. Klaus looked at her dangerously, jaw shut tight and eyes wide. It opened a pit in her stomach. Her heart fell straight through it. She raced backward in her mind, grasping at every word. What had she said wrong?

“You never told me,” Klaus said, clearly hurt. Anger was not something she often saw on him, but it bubbled now in the corners of his mouth and between his brows.

“It was a conversation I wanted to have sober,” [Y/N] said.

“You’re always sober,” Klaus replied.

“You know what I mean,” she bit back. “When I decided to finally tell someone what I’d bottled up my whole life, I wanted it to be Klaus. Not some shell of him.”

Something like guilt flashed in his eyes before he fell back into anger. “That’s not fair.”

“Not fair?” She laughed bitterly. “What’s not fair is that I wake up to calls in the middle of the night from doctors telling me they barely saved you!”

She had opened one floodgate, and unleashed all the others. How they had come to this conversation was a blur in her mind, but she’d practiced these words a thousand times. She’d dreamt of the day Klaus would be sober enough to absorb them.

So when he looked away, [Y/N] hoped he felt their weight. She hoped they would lift off of her shoulders and drop onto his, push him right through the ground, for all she cared.

A voice in the back of her head begged her to take it back. _Any more weight on his shoulders, and he’ll break_. She knew it was true, so she wiped her eyes and softened her voice.

“I worry that every moment I’m not with you could become some sick story,” she said honestly. “Like, oh, _I was buying groceries when my boyfriend died. I was laughing at a joke when Klaus took his last breath. While I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom, he fell asleep in an alley and never woke up_. Every moment I’m not with—“

“You’re not my babysitter,” Klaus said. There was a snarl in his voice, but a crack in it, too. She had hurt him—he had hurt himself.

_I’m not?_ [Y/N] wanted to say. _Then why do I have to drive you everywhere? Why do I have to change your clothes when you piss yourself?_

Instead, she said: “I worry about you because I care about you. Don’t you ever worry about me?” She crossed her fingers behind her back, ground her teeth together. She prayed the answer was yes.

Klaus looked at her, hurt once again. “Of course I do.” He rubbed his eyes, sighed, and added: “Now more than before.”

She blinked. “What?”

“God, [Y/N]!” He exclaimed, turning on his heel. He paced, flinging his arms violently. “This thing about your dad—you’ve been through the same shit as me, and you don’t have—I mean, you don’t drink, you don’t—and the one person you’re supposed to be able to turn to…” Klaus put a hand over his heart. Turned toward her. “Is too busy fucking away his own problems to notice.”

The desperate guilt carved onto his face brought tears to her eyes.

“No,” she said softly. “I was never locked in a mausoleum and—“

“It’s not a contest,” Klaus said, stopping in his tracks. “You have your own shit, and all I could think about was using you to fight mine. God, I’m no better than this asshole…” He gestured lazily toward the urn on the table.

“That’s not true,” [Y/N] said fiercely. “You didn’t know.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he shook his head.

“Of course it does. The only thing I ever told you was that he—“

“—would hate me.” Klaus interrupted. After a moment of cautious silence, a smile flashed across his face. A ridiculous little laugh, in the midst of all the pain.

A smile crept across [Y/N]’s lips, too. “Right.” She had told him that the first day they met, in a disgusting bar that her friends had dragged her into. Klaus was the only beautiful thing in that wood-paneled, reeking hell of an establishment. He was a hell of a dancer, too. God, if her father could only see them dance together…

Klaus hummed as the slick smile spread further across his face. “I thought that was the appeal of me.”

[Y/N] bit her lip. Failed miserably to suppress another smile…And yet, something about it split her heart. “Maybe that was a part of it, at first,” she admitted. “But if I was only looking to spite my father, there are a million other things I could be doing instead of—“

She took a deep breath, realizing that her mouth was running away on her. “The appeal of you,” she said slowly. “Is that you’re _you_ , Klaus.”

The mornings were what made her stay. When he woke up sober. When he woke up as _Klaus_. That clear look in his beautiful eyes, that toothy smile that lit up his face when he saw her in the morning light. That first _good morning_ slurred with sleep, and not with drugs. That sober kiss, those tactful hands that brushed her hair from her face.

And then the pills washed down with breakfast, and swept Klaus away with the ghosts that haunted him.

She would give anything— _anything_ —to have that morning Klaus every minute of the day. How could he not see it, how incredible he is? How did he not know what she would do for him, in half a heartbeat?

“I don’t ever want you to think that I’m with you because of my father. You’re the only part of my life that he hasn’t touched—that he _can’t_ touch,” [Y/N] said desperately. “This is the purest thing I’ve ever—“

She didn’t remember when she started shaking so much. She gripped her hands in white knuckles and pressed them to her lips. One trembling breath after the other.

“Hey,” Klaus said softly. He took [Y/N]’s hands in his, impossibly gentle. Warm as the tears welling up in his eyes. “I know. I do. I mean, it’s the same for me, right? The drugs, this house, my siblings…You’re the only part of my life that has nothing to do with Dad.”

He trailed off, eyes widening, as though he had only realized this now. The gentle touch of his hands turned to a grip. “If I ever lost you, I’d—“

He couldn’t finish. Just stared at her, fear swimming in his eyes.

“I know,” [Y/N] answered, a whisper. “Me too.”

And then his lips were on hers. They moved desperately, deeply, as though he couldn’t get enough of her. As though he was afraid she’d disappear.

He cried into the kiss, salty on her tongue and wet on her face as he trailed off the corner of her mouth. He peppered kisses along her jaw and down her neck, finally resting his forehead in the crook of her shoulder.

He leaned into her, legs nearly giving out. She fell back. Flush against the wall.

[Y/N] held him here, and he held her. It was hard to breathe with how tight they clung, but the feeling of his fingers pressed into her back, tangled up in her hair…his legs against hers…the tickle of his hair on her cheek…

She had never felt so afraid of letting go.

She decided that she never would. “I love you,” she whispered. It was so soft, she wondered if he had even heard over the sound of his crying.

But after a moment, Klaus lifted his head. Slowly. He didn’t dare pull away, just looked down at her. Something new was on his face, something like pain, only sweeter.

“I love _you_ ,” he said, every word punctuated with tears.

“Please don’t—don’t leave me anymore,” [Y/N] begged him, trembling hands finding his face. “Please stay.”

He thought for a moment, never taking his eyes off of her. “Okay,” he said, uncertain.

“I’ll help you,” she promised.

“Okay,” he repeated. He glanced over his shoulder, at the urn looming on the table. “Then don’t leave me, either. Please.”

She took his hand in hers. Squeezed it tight. “I won’t."


End file.
